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Cumshaw called to him and was answered with an oath. "Where are you?" he repeated. "Down here," said the voice, this time modifying its language. "Step carefully or you'll come a cropper." Mr. Cumshaw pulled the bushes apart and found that he was standing on the verge of a sheer descent. "Mind your eye," said the voice of the still invisible Mr. Bradby.
For one thing the food's running short, as you just remarked, and for another I don't intend keeping up this dodging game for ever. We can't last; they'll wear us down." "That's supposing they don't get tired and go home," said the cheerful Mr. Cumshaw. "Not much chance of that," Mr. Bradby retorted. "I only wish they would."
But by dint of prodding and coaxing Bradby forced it through the crackling brush, and then, with a wild whinny of fear, it lost its footing and slid down the slope in an avalanche of grass and twigs. Cumshaw's mount made the descent in fine style, and the two men followed. "Now," said Bradby, when they stood once more on level ground, "the further we get into this timber the better, I say.
The chief uttered the usual warning: "It is my duty to warn you that anything you say will be used in evidence " He got so far when Bradby awoke from his stupor. He gave no warning of his intention, but his doubled fist shot out, caught the other on the point of the jaw and dropped him in a heap on the ground.
Even as he ran his faculties collected themselves, and when he reached the corner of the hut he was almost his own man again. Cumshaw eyed him curiously as he pulled up. "Startled you a bit, didn't I?" he said. "I thought something had happened to you when I heard you call," Bradby answered, a trifle untruthfully.
"How are we to get the horses down here?" queried the practical Mr. Cumshaw. Mr. Bradby eyed the slope down which he had come so precipitately, and then pursed up his lips. "It don't look so easy from here," he said at length. "And from what I can see this place is walled in all round." "Whether it is or not," said Cumshaw, "we've got to get those horses down, and get them down at once."
The frontal bones of the skull were shattered and twisted by the force of the charge; they gave the rest of the face a ghastly, leering look which turned Bradby physically sick. The other man was evidently troubled by no such qualms, for he loosened the gun from the bony hand that had clung to it so desperately through all those years, and tumbled the skeleton itself on to the plank bed.
It's as much my funeral as yours." "It doesn't matter whose funeral it is," Jack Bradby said impatiently. "We've got to get away and do it smart.
For once he made no attempt to disguise his emotions beneath the mask of stoicism. He saw laughter in the other's eyes, the jovial laughter of a man who has always known the sweets of victory, and he jumped to the natural though erroneous conclusion that Bryce had fathomed his connection with the late Mr. Bradby. For all that he did not abandon his defences without some show of resistance.
Cumshaw nodded and dropped on his knees beside the embers of the evening's fire. In a few moments he was busy coaxing them into a blaze. Bradby stood behind him, watching the sweep of his shoulders with calculating eyes.
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